Graubünden has redesigned the Olympic Village in Davos in 2022: The accommodation for 4,000 athletes and coaches will be located in the area between the Solaria holiday home settlement and the center of Davos Dorf. Only 30% of the accommodation capacity is to be built in temporary buildings. The first concept with a significantly higher proportion of temporary buildings between Wolfgang and Lake Davos is therefore off the table.
Athletes, coaches and supervisors of the 2022 Winter Olympics are to be accommodated in an Olympic village within 800 meters of the Parsenn car park and the Solaria holiday home settlement. The new accommodation concept for the teams that has now been presented includes the holiday apartments in the Solaria settlement as well as existing and already planned hotels in the surrounding area. It is not yet clear which hotels will be integrated into the Olympic Village in 2022.
However, the concept is designed in such a way that it has sufficient capacity even if not all planned hotels were available. Around 70 percent of the accommodation capacity is provided in permanent buildings. Temporary buildings are also planned on the area between Bündastraße and the Solaria settlement: In addition to the central buildings for the meeting area, athlete restaurants, offices or storage rooms for teams, modular units for around 1,150 people are planned. All modular buildings are removed after the games and are used elsewhere.
Talks have already been held with prospective buyers from the canton of Grisons to reuse around 400 of the modular residential units.
More sustainable and cost-effective
With the new concept, the share of temporary residential buildings can be reduced from the original 65 percent to around 30 percent. The solution now available brings a significant improvement in economic sustainability and cost savings. The amount of savings is currently being calculated more precisely. They will be incorporated into a revised budget for implementation costs. The new “Olympic Village” corresponds to the desired concept of “The village within a village”.
Unlike in other venues, it is not being rebuilt outside an existing settlement area, but is being implemented in existing or already planned buildings in the established village settlement. It thus meets the sustainability requirements of the Olympic Games in a mountain valley. The initiators have already developed a similar concept for the Olympic Village in St. Moritz, where the teams are accommodated in the hotels in St. Moritz-Bad. The development of the new concept was driven forward in three Davos Innovation Dialogues.
In working groups, locals developed various variants together with specialists from Grisons in 2022. In further discussions with community leaders, tourism service providers, landowners and potential investors, the best options were then selected. The variant now presented was also discussed in talks with representatives of the Davos hotel industry and found to be good. The first variant of the plan included accommodation in the Klinik am Wolfgang and temporary residential buildings on the embankment of the sunken Lake Davos.
However, the high proportion of temporary buildings and the very expensive pile foundations in the bank embankment had not satisfied the initiators of Grisons in 2022. When presenting this first concept, they had therefore already explained that they were looking for a better way.
gartmann.biz supports Graubünden 2022 in media and marketing: Christian Gartmann is Head of Marketing & Communications at the Graubünden 2022 Association.